4/12/08: The Upper Deck

After slugging my way through the morning, sleeping through the Camper Scamper 10K (technically, I didn’t really sleep through the race; I woke up, in Euless, ten minutes before the race started in Dallas) I planned on doing and then lounging around and watching a couple of DVDs (“Fast Food Nation” and “The Oh In Ohio”), I finally got my ass in gear and starting doing stuff on Saturday, namely getting something to eat (Bagelstein’s – Royal and Preston in Dallas), bumming around Border’s while digesting, and then running five miles on the Katy Trail. Which reignited my appetite and after cruising around Dallas trying to decide where to eat, I decided to delay the decision by driving back to the burbs. Which is how I eventually wound up at The Upper Deck, a sports bar on Trinity Boulevard in Ft. Worth, but that weird long arm of Ft. Worth that most people don’t think of as Ft. Worth, which is why a lot of people apparently think the place is in Euless.

The Upper Deck used to be O’Dwyers and then was closed for a time; it opened under new ownership and its new name sometime last spring or early summer, I think. They also built a deck overlooking Trinity Boulevard; I’m assuming this was done to allow them to handle larger crowds because I never heard of people gushing about how scenic Trinity Boulevard is and wondering where they could go to get a decent view. I’m not sure how long O’Dwyers was around but however long it was, I never went there and I had the same streak going with the Upper Deck until Saturday.

While there I had a burger, chili cheese tater tots, and three pints of Shiner Bock. The burger was pretty good and I like their pricing system – the burger is $6.95 and there are all sorts of things – cheese, mushrooms, onions – you can add on free although the more extravagent garnishes (i.e., bacon) cost extra.
The chili cheese tater tots were not that great mostly because of too much mediocre cheese but that was probably actually a good thing; the burger came with fries so as it was I had more food than I really needed.
The Shiner Bock was as tasty as Shiner Bock usually is, which is tasty enough to be my beer of choice when I’m having more than none and it’s available and I’m not trying something different just for the hell of it.

The ambience of the place was laid back wanna-be dive bar but to really be a dive bar you need to have some history, or at least furnishings that look like they might have seen some history. I was sitting in a room off to the side of the entrance; it had booths and tables, flat panel televisions showing the Rangers game, a couple of screens showing NTN trivia, and a couple of couches at one end. From where I was sitting I had a view of the bar, which is directly ahead when you walk through the door. The room I was in was off to the left; there was another room off to the right that I think was more of a game room, but I didn’t really check it out so I can’t say for sure.